ENVS 18: Indigenous Environmental Studies

A collaboration of key experts from around the globe representing nations with existing legal frameworks and nations in the midst of developing such regimes for the protection of indigenous knowledge and culture.

After colonization, Indigenous people faced an extractive property rights regime for both their land and knowledge. This book outlines that regime, and how the symbolic function of international intellectual property continues today to assist states to enclose Indigenous peoples' knowledge. ...

Human ecology - the study and practice of relationships between the natural and the social environment - has gained prominence as scholars seek more effectively to engage with pressing global concerns. In the past seventy years most human ecology has skirted the fringes of geography, sociology and biology. This volume pioneers radical new directions. In particular, it explores the power of Indigenous and traditional peoples' epistemologies both to critique and to complement insights from modernity and postmodernity. ...

Sustainability defines the need for any society to live within the constraints of the land's capacity to deliver all natural resources the society consumes. This book compares the general differences between Native Americans and western world view towards resources. It will provide the 'nuts and bolts' of a sustainability portfolio designed by indigenous peoples. This book introduces the ideas on how to link nature and society to make sustainable choices. To be sustainable, nature and its endowment needs to be linked to human behavior similar to the practices of indigenous peoples. ...

Daughters of Mother Earth is nothing less than a new way of looking at history_or more correctly, the reestablishment of a very old way. It holds that for too long, elements unnatural to Native American ways of knowing have been imposed on the study of Native America. Euro-American discourse styles, emphasizing elite male privilege and conceptual linearity, have drowned out the democratic and woman-centered Native approaches. Even when the damage of western linearity is understood to occur, analysis of Native American history, society, and culture has still been relentlessly placed in male custody, following the western assumption that Euro-American men speak ably for all. This book seeks to redress that balance, allowing the Daughters of Mother Earth to reclaim their ancient responsibility to speak in council, to tell the truth, to guide the rising generations through spirit-spoken wisdom. ...

In a Deeper Sense of Place, the editors collected stories, essays, and personal reflections from geographers who have worked collaboratively with Indigenous communities across the globe. These first-person narratives offer insight into the challenges faced by Native and non-Native scholars to their academic and personal approaches during research with Indigenous communities. By addressing the ethical, political, intellectual, and practical meanings of collaboration with Indigenous peoples, Deeper Sense of Place highlights the ways in which collaborative research can help Indigenous and settler communities find common ground through a shared commitment to land, people, and place. ...

Northern Canada's distinctive landscapes, its complex social relations and the contested place of the North in contemporary political, military, scientific and economic affairs have fueled recent scholarly discussion. At the same time, both the media and the wider public have shown increasing interest in the region. This timely volume extends our understanding of the environmental history of northern Canada - clarifying both its practice and promise, and providing critical perspectives on current public debates. Ice Blink provides opportunities to consider critical issues in other disciplines and geographic contexts. ...

Incorporating indigenous knowledge (IK) is crucial to effective development. This global research-level book on IK and natural resources management addresses cutting edge issues relating to soil management and land degradation, weed and pest control, crop breeding and yields, agro-biodiversity conservation, food production and marketing, climate change adaptation, forest use and agroforestry. ...

An extensive body of literature on Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing has been written since the 1980s. This research has for the most part been conducted by scholars operating within Western epistemological frameworks that tend not only to deny the subjectivity of knowledge but also to privilege masculine authority. As a result, the information gathered predominantly reflects the types of knowledge traditionally held by men, yielding a perspective that is at once gendered and incomplete. Even those academics, communities, and governments interested in consulting with Indigenous peoples for the purposes of planning, monitoring, and managing land use have largely ignored the knowledge traditionally produced, preserved, and transmitted by Indigenous women. While this omission reflects patriarchal assumptions, it may also be the result of the reductionist tendencies of researchers, who have attempted to organize Indigenous knowledge so as to align it with Western scientific categories, and of policy makers, who have sought to deploy such knowledge in the service of external priorities. ...

John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today--that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts. ...